Preparatory work on porting LMDE 6 to the PowerPC arch has begun. The idea behind this project is that this distribution will run on modern PowerPC computers like Mirari and the PowerPC-notebook.
LMDE 6 PPC ships with a cinnamon desktop. The porting comprises most packages as found in Linux Mint Debian Edition 6. Some packages will not be included in LMDE 6 PPC. The serious work (i.e. compiling arch dependent packages) has been done. The packages have been uploaded to the MintPPC server and installation tests will be done. I will update soon with more information.
This port is based on Debian unstable (sid), just like MintPPC, as there is no longer a stable powerpc Debian release since “Jessie”, i.e. Debian 8, released in 2015.
I have a working installation of LMDE 6 PPC now 🙂 The Debian branding issue has been solved. The only thing that needs to be done now is testing on real hardware, as I run this system in QEMU Power10. It is very slow.
Link to screenshot:
https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/lmde6ppc-png.2514890/
Together with ‘Skateman’ we tested LMDE 6 PPC on the brand new Mirari board. Unfortunately, the board only accepts 32-bits operating systems. LMDE 6 PPC is based on Debian ppc64, so we can report that it won’t run on this new Amiga. It has to do with the fact that this board has an e5500 chip, which does not support Altivec. Many programs in ppc64 Debian are compiled with Altivec. I cannot port LMDE to ppc32 as cinnamon does not build (i.e. there is no cinnamon). The only hope for me is that my distribution will run on the ppc board which needs to be built by the powerpc-laptop project, as they aim for an e6500 chip, with support for Altivec. ‘Skateman’ told me that they might also make Mirari boards with that same chip in the future.